Modern Times Theater’s “The Perils of Mr. Punch”

Time:
-
Location:
10 Mayo Street, Portland, Maine 04101, US
Calendar:

This is the one and only Punch and Judy, presented live, and updated for the 21st century.

Allow Mr. Punch to remove your bad mood, in this absurdist delight for four out of the five senses. Watch as Judy tames unruly plumbing while avoiding the jaws of the carnivore du jour! And, feast your eyes upon the diaper change that should not be! The script has been updated to remove the traditional murder and misogyny of a Punch and Judy show, but Mr. Punch still swings a verbal slapstick at the powers that be.

It’s a melodrama of epically small proportions, and it’s so funny that you’ll forget to take out your phone for at least the first half-hour. It’s a low-tech old-time spectacle, as entertaining to the masses of today as it was three hundred years ago.

The hand puppets are created from up-cycled designer trash and performed in an eccentric itinerant puppet stage. The show is hosted per tradition by a “bottler”, the uku-lady Rose Friedman. Justin Lander– showman of the absurd– portrays all the characters.

The program is rounded out with live music played on a variety of instruments, from the cornet to the bicycle pump.

Funded in part by the New England States Touring program of the New England Foundation for the Arts, made possible with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts Regional Touring Program and the six New England state arts agencies.